The U.S. Treasury Department has been taking contributions toward the national debt since 1961. The largest single donation, made in 1992, was $3.5 million. Most contributions have been under $100 dollars.

Right away, everyone wants to know what's to be cut. Whatever you all settle on cutting, it should not be science. Investment in science is investment in innovation. New ideas are what keep the U.S. economy driving forward.

If the deal is reached, the Republicans have won: they have locked in a federal tax system that collects so little total federal revenue that government can afford almost nothing aside from the military, interest payments, retirement programs and health care.

I call on all of us regardless of age to forge a compact that will undergird the United States in the decades ahead. It will require that we resist so focusing on the needs of seniors that we fail to invest in young people and therefore neglect our children and grandchildren.

I am sure we have all had it up to here with breathless reporting about the fiscal cliff. But within a month or two after the December 31, 2012 deadline for resolving the cliff, there looms another, more serious economic issue: extending the debt limit.